1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to the display of data tables, and more specifically, the invention relates to the display of tables having plural or multi-level headers.
2. Background Art
It is often useful to represent data in the form of a data table. Conventionally, data tables include a plurality of cells arranged in horizontal rows and vertical columns. Each of the columns and/or rows typically contain a cell describing the content of the cells of the column and/or row, such as a parameter in a spreadsheet table, a time period, or geographical area in a table of a text or a presentation document.
The cells describing the content of each of the columns of the data table are often arranged in one row located in the first row of the data table, although they can also be located at the last row of the data table or at some other position within each of the columns. The description of the content of each of the columns is termed the header inscription.
A header inscription can take any of a variety of forms, such as alphabetic, numeric, alphanumeric, symbolic, or of some other form representative of the column contents. A header inscription can be of varying length, and is frequently of a different length from that of the contents of the cells within the column.
One specific, common type of table found in a variety of hardware/software computer systems and applied in a variety of different contexts is the categorization table. A categorization table organizes data under successive and expandable levels of categorized headings. Such headings give relevant information to the user as to the nature of the underlying subheadings and/or data grouped under particular headings at a given level.
With many conventional database management programs, it is difficult or time consuming to manage the data in data tables having multiple levels of headers. In part this is because the top, or first level, headers may have different numbers of columns beneath them.